I wish my house had, not walls, but windows. Tall ones. Windows that stretched along where the walls would have been, windows for ceilings, windows for beams, windows for support, windows arching around as rotundas, windows slanting and angled as roofs, windows beneath my feet at the floor. Windows everywhere. Forgetting the impossible danger such a house would impose upon its inhabitants, that is where I would like to live. In a house made of windows. There’s no privacy, but set the house far enough back in the woods and trees can act as barriers for privacy.

Think of it: I could lay my bed down on any floor and still have a view of the stars in the night sky. I would have the sun wake me up every morning and have the sun put me to sleep every night. I could watch the birds migrate north to south, south to north, every day, every hour that they happened to fly by. I would see each deer tromping through my yard, each coyote, each small fox that happened to stumble by. I would be able to look up in the rain and see the water dripping onto my ceiling; I would watch as it pooled at the top before being blown onto the sides, and then I would watch as it slowly dribbled down the windowed walls. And then later, when the lightning would come, I could stand anywhere at all in my house and see it all; I would be safe within the coverage of my home but would rarely miss a strike; I could watch as each current came down to touch a finger to a part of this Earth of ours.

A house such as this was once featured in a nightmare of mine, as part of the nightmare, part of what I feared. You see, in the dream my house was transformed into a house of windows such as the one I describe, but I became terrified it would shatter. No matter that the bad luck comes with a shattered mirror, not a shattered window, I still was forced to stand under its protection shivering at the thought of its glass coming down on me. Raining down on me. I imagine now that it may have been rather beautiful, actually, to see a house of windows come down like that. It would be like rain but it would reflect itself, the glass throwing light and perhaps moments of color, the glass coming down like rain but both less ephemeral and more ephemeral than the rain would be. Less, because when it falls it will stay on the ground; it will keep its shape, it won’t evaporate, condense, form some kind of strange, glassy, reflective cloud as soon as the sun has inhaled it into the sky for another cycle. But also more, because it will be in the air for only seconds until the windows and walls of the house are gone and all that’s left is open air, no windows any longer to reflect or protect against it. Just an empty space, in seconds, empty air, unlike the rain that falls and falls for minutes, or even hours, or even days.

But I don’t know––I think I’d like to see it. I want to hear the sounds. The shattering of a house of glass, a house of windows. I’ve come to rather like sudden, loud sounds: thunder, fireworks, so why not glass? I wonder how different the before and after would look; one with windows, one without; perhaps no one would even notice the absense. It would be the same as before, maybe the view just slightly less twirled and shifted than the air already makes it. Glass replaced with nothingness; will I know the difference? If the house shatters and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If the windows break but evaporate into clouds before anyone sees it, will anyone realize it was ever there, or is now gone? Do I really want a house of windows or do I just not want a house at all? Sometimes I wonder.